Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1887-06-18
THE LITERARY PROFESSION
BY GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
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Three forces stand out in American society
above all other things: The politician, the
newspaper and the money-maker. The first
two are exalted parts of the last.
While there are many other influences
trying to be felt, such as the pulpit and so
ciety, they have no point of concentration
like the others. The churches are without
any legal connection, and are not equal to
the liquor interest in many n encounter
American society has no centre as it has in
Europe, especially in England. New York
has society of the rich, Boston of the con-
siderate, Philadelphia of the traditional, but
the money-makers, the politicians and the
newspapers really create what society we
have or sustain it. We would not know who
belonged to society" but for reading it in
journals which have the power to leave out
any number of prominent names. The
composition of American society, therefore,
is weak like the particles of a world which
have not yet been drawn together and held
there by gravity.
Those professions, like literature, which
have made the pride of so many great gov
ernments, are in this country disdained by
the politicians, turned into police news by
the press and either coarsely patronized or
completely overlooked by the money makers.
The English people pay reverence to Walt
whitman, as our most original poet, who
lives in indulgence and never had an office
except to be hospital nurse in the war or de-
partment clerk. But the great majority of
the Americans who have any idea of Whit
man conceive him to be either crazy or a
bad man. Probably no preacher of the Cos
pei in America has approached this kindly
spirit, which looks out upon the world more
like the founder of our era th"r anybody
since his time; he sees the lilies OF the field,
the Magdalen, the children, the fishermen,
and comprehends them all in his, however,
imperfect art.
In England this man could be made re-
spectacle by the literary profession, or, what
is better, could have been taken hold of by
the government where his activity of mind
could have been put to the public USE But
since our government is one of politicians
merely, most of whom are ignorant and self
ish, the writing men grow up averss to the
nature of the government itself unless they
live in some very new society which has
energy enough to conserve the patriotism of
its authors.
The newspaper is that other force which
recruits among the literary element that has
been forsaken by the government. Like a
person rejected by his sweetheart, who takes
to the alehouse, the literary spirit in this
country, refused recognition by the state,
browns its sorrows in the newspapers.
We are still so young and uniformed that
comparatively few can recognize any sense
or reality in my statement. that for want of
some employing power of the learning and
literature in this country 1t is growing up
without soul.
Nearly all the literature of the past de-
pended upon that union of social and gov
eminent consideration which discovered Boo
caccio, patronized Rubens, and made Goethe
chancellor. The founder of physics, which
has given the Anglo-Saxon race all its start,
was made the chancellor of England and a
nobleman with an estate; Bacon, whom the
tyros suspect to have written Shakespeare,
was like Shakespeare the real. taken hold of
by the court and the nobility. American
society contains no such classes, nor will its
institutions consider in any way that the
literary force has part in the government
What is called mugwumpery is in part the
first organized rebellion of the literary class
against the politicians; the money-makers
select by their fears between the two ele-
ments.
As for the newspapers, they can exist indie
pendent of the politicians and can compel
tribute from the money -getters, but, like the
politicians, the newspapers generally speak
ing, regard literary inclination as sign of
hnman weakness; and we therefore have a
country in which the newspaper is uni
versal and the politician ineradicable and
never improving.
The American churches, in general, spend
nearly all the time they have for literature
in decrying the morals of some writer they
cannot understand, who is perhaps as bold as
their Master who began their religion. You
still find the ministers studying Pollock as a
master of style-mainly because he took
Lord Byron to task, man whose shoes he
was not fit to blacken. The great teachers
of the world have generally been in pulpits
of their own, seldom getting a congregation
while they lived.
Our society is growing up the great
anomaly among the nations, in that it is the
only one which has no recognition of hon
esty in matters of literary property. We
clamor to the other countries that our patent
rights must be protected, while we steal from
Europe a book, without compromising its
author or publisher, and have not the least
doubt of our scrupulousness when we say
that our people must have cheap books"
The American Congress has with great re-
luctance after years of agitation, consented
to let the public library be taken outside of
the Capitol building; these politicians used
the books for their wives, children and de-
pendents to paw over; and when the library
had gotten up to about 1,0O00OO volumes or
more, they still thought it was exacting on
the part of public opinion to ask them to
surrender their property. These very scamps
have never extended property rights to the
authors of most of those books the whole
library up TO the present time is vast mon
ument of piracy. Barbaric is the conscience
of that land which will neither recognize
the literary principle among its own
people nor pay to those authors
whose countries have encouraged them a sin